click to view larger versionScott Bieser's cover for the complete
edition of Tom Paine MaruTo be electro-published Real Soon Now

EDITORIAL MATTERS:

Welcome to the 310th issue of The Libertarian Enterprise!

This is a big issue this time. A baker's dozen of articlesif
we count the letters page as an article, more than that if we also
count the 3 letters. Such a deal we have for you! And that illustration
up there is the cover for the new, un-censored edition of Tom Paine
Maru by L. Neil Smith, which is going to be published very soon.
You'll hear about it here first.

This issue's Motto comes from "Conservatives and the Second Amendment",
by Anthony Gregory.

This issue's Special Thanks! go out to D.A., R.W.B., and
S.F. for their generous donations to the "Keep TLE Going Fund".
We do appreciate it! you are invited to make your
very own donation to that effort. TANSTAAFL! Read all about how
at:

Letters to the EditorLetters from Jim Davidson, Steve Seech, and the Free State Project
 FULL STORY

Conservatives and the Second Amendmentby Anthony Gregory
Nearly anyone will tell you that conservatives are
much more favorable than liberals toward the Second
Amendment. Conservatives will tell you this, and so
will most liberals and libertarians.
 FULL STORY

Heinlein's Wisdom as Taught by Sergeant Taylorby Ali Hassan Massoud
I remember as a kid that Starship Troopers blew
me away. I was raised by anti-war, quasi-pacifist baby-boomer parents who
absolutely believed and so indoctrinated into me the belief that anyone
who served in the military was a either a misguided victim if they were
conscripted, or bloodthirsty psycho that liked the idea of fighting
and killing if they were a volunteer.
 FULL STORY

End it, Don't Mend itby Abe Clark
Political reality has set in. President Bush appears
to be giving up on the idea of partially private Social Security accounts,
and turning his energies toward more modest reforms, such as raising the
retirement age. Although the private accounts plan tried to address one
of the system's biggest flaws, the lack of individual ownership of any
financial assets, many libertarians correctly opposed it for adding a
forced government savings plan on top of an already bad idea. Several
libertarians have proposed more reasonable plans to phase out Social
Security over the next several decades, realizing that any true reform
must solve the problem permanently. There is a more obvious solution,
however, and one that libertarians shouldn't be afraid to rally behind:
Stop taking money from working people in the name of Social Security,
and stop giving it to other people. Immediately.
 FULL STORY

The Thievery Societyby Todd Andrew Barnett
Politicians are something else. When power attracts
them like a magnet attracting metal, they don't hesitate to seize itnot
even for a moment's notice. Once they attain the reins of that power, they
impose a gamut of statist machinations upon the American people the likes of
which no one has ever seen in the history of American politics. And then
before you are aware of it, they will employ cute buzzwords that are merely
crafted to be of paramount importance (when it really isn't) on one hand, but,
on the other, are cleverly designed to disguise what they truly mean. When
they use words like "freedom," "liberation," and "ownership," what they truly
mean is "control," "slavery," and "thievery." President Bush's much-touted,
much-heralded "ownership society"a state-created machination devised
and utilized to give "ownership" to you in the form of a nationally coerced
savings program masquerading as private accounts while diverting funds from
an aging nationally socialized retirement program, thus only guaranteeing a
meager incomeis an obvious epitome of said buzzwords.
 FULL STORY

Censorship and Mind Controlby Ron Beatty
As I'm sure most of you have noticed, there has been a
very strong movement in Congress to legislate freedom of speech out of existence.
 FULL STORY

Vermont Agrees to Disagreeby Jonathan David Morris
Did Vermont just secede from the Union?
You may have missed it, but roughly 50 Vermont towns
passed resolutions last week calling for the return of
their National Guardsmen from Iraq. "They can't do that," you say.
Sure they can. They just did.
 FULL STORY

Government Gets It Wrong (Again)by Caleb Paul
Restricting the flow of labour, either within a
country, or across countries is ultimately detrimental
to the economies of both. Acknowledging the mistake is
a start, but tying the recovery down with bureaucratic
red tape doesn't help either.
 FULL STORY

Is it Time for National Freedom Event?by Robert F. Hawes Jr.
I was glad to see Dada Orwell's article of several
weeks ago concerning how the liberty community could use an event or
gimmick of some type to win some much-needed publicity in the media.
Speaking as a Christian and a former conservative, I truly believe that
there are many people in this country who are more "Libertarian" or
"Jeffersonian" in their thinking than they realize. That was certainly
the case with me at one time. I had heard of the Libertarian Party, but
I had mistaken ideas about what libertarians really stood for. I saw the
world only in shades of Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative.
That narrow viewpoint changed in time, once I challenged some of my own
fundamental notions, and I know that many of us could share similar stories.
 FULL STORY

What Have We Done For Our Heroes?by Donald Meinshausen
We seem to be people starved for heroes. I remember in
1979 during the Iranian hostage crisis the cretins who call us our media
called the bureaucrats encaged at the embassy heroes. Now the best term
you could call these people is victims. They, wisely or not, waited passively
until rescued and nothing else. The same term was also applied to the victims
of 9/11 thereby cheapening the concept of hero.
 FULL STORY

What a State We're In!by Lady Liberty
This week, I was in the audience for the annual "State
of the City" address offered up by the City Manager of the town where I
live. I try to attend these yearly talks to see what our local government
thinks the rest of us think. Fair enough. So here's what I think: While I
don't think anything that was said was particularly surprising, I think
that some city leaders might be a little surprised by what it is I think
about what it was I actually heard when I listened between the lines.
 FULL STORY

Filtering Entertainmentby Jay P Hailey
From a Libertarian perspective, Star Trek sucks. It's a
space fantasy rooted in a brain damaged little atheist socialist utopia. The
writers as a general rule are either inhabitants of the political left wing
or arguably outright sociopaths. How can I watch that?
 FULL STORY